


The Art of Running like a Bat out of Hell

by Immerghensi



Category: ONEUS (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not K-Pop Idols, Disney, Disney World & Disneyland, Happy Ending, M/M, No Smut, Not Beta Read, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:07:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23743540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immerghensi/pseuds/Immerghensi
Summary: You've gotta be kidding meHwanwoong groans, mainly to himself but also to any of the numerous celestial beings who are getting a kick out of his misery right now.It turns out Youngjo reallyisa Disney Prince.
Relationships: Kim Geonhak | Leedo/Son Dongju | Xion, Kim Youngjo | Ravn/Yeo Hwanwoong
Comments: 17
Kudos: 160





	1. Down in the Valley

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Rainbows don't look @ me *hides in shame*

Maybe if Barbara from HR's kids phoned home more often, their mom wouldn’t try to boa-constrictor Hwanwoong into a conversation every time she caught sight of his bright blonde hair through the sliver of window in her office door. 

That’s how he got stuck. 

She’d caught him as he tried to do the ‘I’m busy please don’t talk to me’ run on the off-chance he wouldn’t hear the tell-tale ‘HENRY!’ that rang out 99% of the time. Barbara was one of those people who saw how many letters were in his non-English name and skipped straight to asking if she could call him another H-name, to which he can't remember agreeing to. At this point, she’s butchered his actual name so many times that he’d rather her call him that. 

In the middle of her rant about how her kids don't call enough, something passes by the window and catches her eye, her chair pushing back so she can wave enthusiastically at whoever it is. Behind him, the door handle clicks, and a rush of cool air blows past him. 

“Ravn! Come in, I was just telling Henry about James.”

A figure clad in all black stands beside him, a dark splotch against the office’s bright palette. Eyes trailing down, he can see the top three buttons of a high-quality shirt are undone and if the universe could pause time and let him scream for a while, that would be dandy. The stranger is kind of cute yet hot in that rough, stray dog kind of way, and Hwanwoong is tempted to shoot his shot once they’re out of this, but it’s best to wait until another day because he’s not looking cute, and he needs to make a good impression. 

Ravn- Raven? _whatever-_ shines a plastic smile which fades as he looks at Hwanwoong.

“Nice to meet you.” He says, offering a hand to shake, then getting the daylights startled out of him by Ravn kissing the tips of Hwanwoong's knuckles. Hwanwoong barely stops himself from pulling back and swatting at him like a displeased cat. 

“The pleasure is all mine.” He grins. His voice is smooth and melodic enough to ignore whatever… _that_ was. 

Whatever. He’s probably just old school. 

Barbara doesn’t appear to notice what just happened, or maybe she’s seen it enough times to not be phased anymore (which is kind of concerning) and barrels on. 

“So I was telling Henry about how over the summer, I met a man, James….” she says, and proceeds to reveal more than he ever needed or wanted to know about her personal life, and Hwanwoong is _really_ not keen on having this conversation. He’s considering the probability of there being a catastrophic failure on one of the rides, like a Ferris-Wheel-of-corpses type deal, when he feels a hand press into his side. Long fingers graze across his thin jacket as though stroking along piano keys in the direction of the door. 

He looks down. 

He looks up. 

_Damn, he’s good_

Ravn hasn’t missed a beat. While one hand is setting a scene which has Barbara completely distracted, she has no idea what his other is doing. Hwanwoong keeps the devilish grin off his face long enough to mutter a low, serious ‘excuse me’ as he makes his escape into the Administration wing.

_Free at last!_

The cool air rushes into his lungs to replace the humid 75 degrees of Barbara’s unintentional torture chamber. What a relief… 

It takes a while for Ravn’s body to slip out one leg at a time, then the rest of his torso, and finally his lingering head from the chatty woman’s hideaway.

“...would love that. I’ll let Masego know you said hi.” 

Now safely outside, he's free to take a breath. He lets out a long exhale like he's just finished running a marathon and honestly he doesn't blame him. 

“Woah,” he says, and the pant that follows shouldn’t sound as good as it does, “forgot how much she liked to talk…” 

The man turns to him, a head full of perfectly, artfully tousled black curls catching on the sunlight streaming through the giant glass panels in the ceiling. 

_Shit, he's pretty…_

His brain rushes to find something else to say just to keep him there a little longer. “You do that often? The whole ‘putting out verbal housefires', I mean."

“Comes with the territory of being a real-life Disney Prince.” he says, and Ravn has the audacity to _wink_.

Hwanwoong's eyes nearly go rocketing around his sockets, but he covers it by lowering his head and ruffling his hair. He’s tempted to sock Ravn in the shoulder, but that would hardly be appropriate for someone he’s known for all of about two minutes who got him out of a pinch unprompted. 

“I think I’ve seen you before... you’re friends with Lee Keonhee, right?” Parted lips show off perfect pink softness. Ravn wears a smile like it's second nature. He probably kisses well too... 

“Yes…?” Hwanwoong quirks his head in half confusion, half suspicion, jumping as Ravn straightens up like his mental actuator has gone off. 

“Knew it! We were having a meeting with catering and something broke in the kitchen. Keonhee came over to us to apologize, said his friend ‘Hwanwoong from Ops’ would be there to take care of things and what do you know, you ran in! I know a lot of the Ops guys. You’re good at what you do.”

“Oh gosh, I can't believe you remember that…. _Ravn_?” 

He waves a hand. “That’s just Barbara’s name for me. You can call me Youngjo.” 

Hwanwoong’s blood freezes.

Fuck

Fuckfuckfuck

Oh man he really goofed this time

Just hear him out, ok? 

Ok…

So when Hwanwoong was hired, he was sitting and making friends with HR because that’s what new hires do. Want anything done in a timely fashion? Become friendly with HR and they'll keep an eye out. Someone is being a jerk? Let HR know and they'll end it before it's even started. Naturally, being of small stature and apparently blessed in the face, Hwanwoong has no trouble getting all buddy-buddy with them.

Which means they talk to him.

HR _love_ talking to him, and they also love talking about Kim Youngjo, one of their department's favorite subjects. Hwanwoong has been employed for all of about three weeks and could probably ace a trivia game about him. 

Here’s where it gets interesting. 

Even though he's just a seasonal employee, Youngjo has a _reputation_. He’s got a story, and that story varies based on which of the seemingly innumerable coworkers with a heart boner Hwanwoong's talking to. 

Some say he’s a classic heartthrob. 

Others say he’s a real-life Disney prince (pun _not at all_ appreciated). 

And still others say he’s like the cute boy-next-door. 

But one thing is clear- Youngjo is the kind of person who has all of Hwanwoong’s red flags going up.

Because Youngjo is so perfect that there _has_ to be something wrong with him. Like ‘psycho killer qu'est ce que c'est’-type wrong. There's no way a person can be this friendly without planning to eat some poor guy's liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. 

He's no 'real-life Disney prince'. He's no 'cute boy next door'. He's a man pretending like he isn’t aware of how powerful he is, and like he doesn’t know how everyone feels about him. 

Hwanwoong knows better than to venture so close to such a social chameleon. 

“Yeo Hwanwoong, but you already knew that.” 

"Just that and not much else. But it sounds like you've got a lot of stories."

He shrugs, "I've been around the block a time or three." 

Youngjo leans against the wall, arms crossed and smile lopsided. “I've got some too. Maybe we could exchange some over coffee sometime. Are you free this weekend?”

Hwanwoong blinks.

_Oh no._

Nope. 

This can’t be happening. 

Why?

Because Hwanwoong is Hwanwoong and these things like heart attacks and freak accidents and pretty men who are probably serial killers asking what he thinks he’s asking are things that happen to normal people like Mingi and Wooyoung, not to him. This is decidedly horrible. 

He needs to eject himself from the situation.

_Stat._

_"_ I... Uh..." He says like an intelligent caveman. 

He spots a door about 2 feet away, one that he knows will open (God, how embarrassing would that be if it didn’t?) and subtly guides them over to it as quickly and as inconspicuous as he can. The pushbar opens, to his immense relief.

“Well it was great meeting you thanks for saving me from Barbara I’ll see you sometime OK BYE!” he half-shouts, startling a couple of interns who definitely know the woman and might go back and tell her about this weird charade, and fine, fantastic, he'll deal with the fallout later, it’s time for him to _go_. He throws himself out the door without checking how badly he’s confused and probably offended Youngjo, rocketing down the flights of metallic stairs, through a hedge, almost into a stream, and off straight ahead to get as far away from the building as possible. It's a narrow getaway, but he's getting away and that's better than whatever was about to happen. 

About five minutes later, he sees the edge of the lake and realizes that the Ops headquarters is in the opposite direction.

++

Hwanwoong decides that he can never talk to Youngjo again, accidental or otherwise, for the sake of his weak heart and his dignity.

He decides this while in bed because _of course_ people like Keonhee could food poison themselves with a pufferfish and be perfectly fine in two hours and Yeosang could take a tumble down a hill after failing a skateboarding trick and get up like nothing happened, but _noooooo_ , the second Hwanwoong walks through a drizzle with his thin jacket while on no sleep, his body immediately cancels itself and he becomes a teary-eyed pneumonia-ridden mess. 

He ponders the reason why the higher powers have decided to play with him and tries not to hack his lungs out.

What a fucking horrible day...

++

Hwanwoong is part of the Facilities and Operations team, which basically means he’s a mechanical engineering court wizard who gets called in whenever something breaks, which is startlingly often. The department is full of men who are taller than him but not by much, most of them older Americans with bushy white beardstaches and potbellies minus Dmitri, the one stray Russian who looks like he’s simultaneously living in 1983 and 2101 and responds to everything with a series of grunts. They get along well enough. His co-workers treat Hwanwoong like the son they never had or the son who preferred fixing cars instead of sterile white labs (which was to say they gave him many life lectures and were overly invested in his nonexistent love life). Hwanwoong is one of those hard-working types- like 'wiping away sweat and leaving a grease stain', knee-deep in the nitty-gritty'- so they trust him to tackle issues on his own. 

Today’s issue has to do with Under the Sea, namely how it’s turned into an eternal smoke machine. His manager isn’t pleased, but he’s the only one they could spare since the rest of them have to deal with getting the Polynesian Village Resort functional by mid-July. Moonbyul tells him to give her a call if anything goes horribly wrong so she can hunt down Admin. 

Hwanwoong doesn't like how that sounds, but thanks her regardless. 

He walks down the main concourse into the center, heading around the path to the right instead of through the castle. There are a good number of families getting their vacations in early. Each department held a meeting at the end of the public school year specifically to prepare them for this, though it still comes as a surprise to see the sheer number of humans crammed into a few square miles. 

Maybe he’ll get used to it after a few years. 

Hwanwoong swings past the gate to Storybook Circus and-

He stops in his tracks.

“Oh, you’ve _got_ to be kidding me.”


	2. Silver Black Phantom

Hwanwoong props the phone on his knee, tilting as the new busdriver undershoots a turn. He uses his two free hands to try cleaning off his glasses and smoothing his hair into something that isn't a bird's nest. 

“Keonhee, you asshole, stop laughing!” 

Keonhee does _not_ stop laughing, even when Hwanwoong threatens to fill his Kindle with romance novels designed for middle-aged housewives and promises to hide all of his spoons and untie his shoelaces when he becomes a ghost. 

“This is something that could only happen to you.”

Hwanwoong scoffs back as the driver greets the curb with the front right tire.

“The universe must get a kick out of this…”

It turns out Youngjo is actually a Disney Prince. 

He’s stationed in the Grotto as Prince Eric and Hwanwoong kind of wants to throw something, namely himself, but he lost the department rock-paper-scissors match when he tried to trade which means he _has_ to troubleshoot the ride or otherwise forfeit his honor.

So far, he’s spent most of his days hunkered down in the depths of Archives where no one will find him. It’s not that he’s _scared_ of Youngjo, he's just picking and choosing his battles. There's no point in pointlessly stirring up drama when he could just as easily go around it. 

“I think you should take him up on that date.” Keonhee throws out, probably so he can be treated to another of Hwanwoong's famous rants.

“No way! Are you crazy? He’ll probably go Dahmer on me or something.” 

Hwanwoong can practically _hear_ Keonhee rolling his eyes. 

“You really need to stop with the true crime references. I’m starting to understand you when you talk jargon and it’s scaring me.” 

“It’s the power of osmosis.” 

“Yeah, yeah. When are you going to be here?” 

While the universe laughed at him, at least he had a friend close by. It was by pure luck that they worked for the same company, and even more so that they lived a 15 minute drive (8 minutes post-tourist season) apart.

“We’re passing the downtown center. It’s already starting to get crowded.” He hears a loud groan from the other end and a _pooft_ , probably from a mattress suddenly compressing under his weight.

“October is the time to go! Why can’t anyone remember that?” 

“School’s out for summer, you know the deal. I mean, at least you get to stay indoors where only a few of them go.” 

The bus driver misses a stop and lets three disgruntled passengers off two streets later. 

“I know, but the ones I get are always rich assholes. Can we switch for a day? I’ll play a game of advanced arts and crafts and you can deal with every Susan, Karen, and Janet who asks if they can speak to the manager.”

“I still can’t believe you’re a manager.” 

“I KNOW, RIGHT?!” The shrill yell almost takes out his ear drum. “Like??? Sir, why are you trusting me with _anything_ ??? I’m literally the _least_ amount of qualified." 

Hwanwoong lets out a big, ugly laugh, one that makes the man in the sideways-facing aisle shoot him a dirty look. In reality, Keonhee is incredibly qualified. His fast-track brain is well-suited for handling multiple crises at once without every losing track of what he has in his hands. While Hwanwoong's preferred method is hunkering down to solve one problem at a time quickly, Keonhee ping-pongs through enough tasks to count on his fingers and toes and finishes them all eventually.

Hwanwoong pulls the cord for his stop. 

The bus drops him off at the end of an unsuspecting suburban block. Keonhee rents out a part of a house from a nice old lady who smells perpetually of Bath and Body Works and kitty litter, and he has a massive bookshelf which keeps him entertained in place of a TV. When Hwanwoong and Dongju come over, they usually end up playing board games or playing a podcast in the background while chatting. 

Tonight is no exception. 

“What up, nerds?” he shouts over the dulcet sounds of the Science Vs. podcast.

Tonight they’re ordering from that Mexican place down the road that rocks Christmas lights all year round, the little mom-and-pop shop with arguably the best guacamole in Anaheim, and they’re going to talk about everything.

Keonhee exits the kitchen, throws Hwanwoong his sweater that he forgot about two weeks ago, and leads him by the hand to… whatever science project he’s cooking up this time. 

"Perfect timing! I need your help." 

Hwanwoong and Keonhee ran into each other the first day of their third week during freshman year at college. Keonhee had screamed when he realized he wasn’t alone in the tutoring center, and Hwanwoong had felt so bad at laughing that he’d offered to buy Keonhee lunch. They kissed. It was gross. But they got along too well to not stay friends. 

After their second year, Keonhee had spent half an hour crying into his shirt about how he was leaving for the Culinary Institute because Neuroscience wasn’t for him, and how he would miss Hwanwoong lots and lots. Hwanwoong could understand why someone so bright and chirpy would feel stifled by the rigidity of modern academics. There were some people who liked searching for one absolute, correct answer. Keonhee was not one of those people. 

Their promises to keep in touch had been lost amongst exams and the trials of adulthood; imagine his surprise when Moonbyul introduced him to the Dining Services staff. 

"I'll be back in like… 30 seconds."

Keonhee makes him hold onto some weird batter _thing_ that clocks in at a solid 3/10 on the ‘this is a nice texture’ scale. While he mutters to himself about needing ingredients Hwanwoong has never heard of, Hwanwoong looks over his shoulder at Dongju, who’s preoccupied with his phone. 

“‘you beat that level yet?”

“I’ve been trying, but I just can’t get it. I used up all my hearts last night, I’m waiting until they replenish to go again.”

Dongju may have looked the most put together, but he was the youngest by a little more than a year; a good 30 years younger than everyone in Legal. He was a wickedly intelligent, unbelievably sharp-tongued young man who Hwanwoong had all but crashed into while he was looking for the HR department. Dongju was also quite playful, when he felt like it. He’d extended that playfulness on that fateful day sprawled on the hardwood floor of Administration.

“Damn, you have so much patience.” Keonhee laughs, throwing out some comment about what he would do if he were in that situation. He’s never had the patience to wait out game timers (which is why he’s now taking the strange mass from Hwanwoong and giving him something else to hold so he can work with it himself.) (“It’s alive!!!” Hwanwoong yells in his best Dr. Frankenstein impersonation, and Keonhee presses a bony knee into his thigh.) Dongju is airing the plan of starting their own YouTube channel to make use of Keonhee’s tendency to scream when he plays video games, regardless of genre, when the topic inevitably comes back to haunt him. 

“So are you gonna tell Ju or what?” Keonhee asks, fully aware that that's all Dongju needs to take it from there.

Hwanwoong shoots him a dirty look. 

“Tell me what?” Suddenly his phone isn't so interesting, and Dongju leans forward to rest his chin on his hand like The Thinker. Hwanwoong sighs. 

_Looks like there's no getting out of this now…_

“Get in here and sit down. It's storytime…"

++

It seems silly to expect Dongju to do anything other than laugh harder than Keonhee. Dongju has interacted with Youngjo a few times, but considering there aren't so much walls in Legal as there are glass panels, there wasn’t much smalltalk. They reassure him that it’s not a huge deal, and that if it is, they’ve got his back, to which he thanks them and also tells them to fuck off. When Hwanwoong goes home, he takes a five-minute breather face down on his mattress to consider how he could be such a social disaster. 

He should have seen it earlier. The second Youngjo kissed his hand like a nutjob, it should have sent a red flag up. He's just another pretty guy with a nice smile and time to spare who finds humor in making every human on the planet believe they have some special connection with him. 

_What a tragedy_ , he thinks. 

If he weren't so blatantly a psychopath, he'd be the prime example of boyfriend material. 

++ 

The second floor apartment he lives in isn’t a bad setup for someone his age. It’s pretty great, minus a few things like the neighbor in 27 playing music sporadically and the on-again-off-again couple in 36 that enjoys loud makeup sex that lasts all. night. long. At least 27 has the decency to leave out apology cookies and ‘sorry for the disturbance’ brownies, which really comes in handy when he’s overdue for a trip to the supermarket and needs to put something in his stomach and before work. 

“Thank you very much…” he grins, seeing the box of snickerdoodles on his doorstep; an apology for last week’s impromptu Queen concert. 

He’s going to need his strength- he’s done at the Archives, which means today is the first day he’s going to be on-site.

++

Whoever was operating Under the Sea operated it so wrong that his screen looks more like a bad game of tic-tac-toe than a diagnostics checklist. According to the 5 red _WARNING_! pop ups, he'll need to do some minor upgrades as well.

It’s going to be a headache, and that’s _before_ taking Youngjo into account. 

Hwanwoong watches him interact with guests while he waits for the supervisor to finish filling out the forms and what he sees is perfect form; perfect behavior. He doesn’t even break a sweat turning a mother into putty in his hands while her child talks to Ariel. Youngjo has that rare and terrifying ability to be whatever his conversational partner wants, whenever he wants, and it sends an unending wave of shivers down his spine. 

“Hwanwoong?” The teenager who placed the service ticket asks in a small, hesitant voice, “Do you need me to do anything?” 

_Right, the job._ Can’t lose focus. Especially not like this. 

“No, thank you.” His reply is short, snippy. He snatches up his toolbox and hurries inside, intent on running through the photocopied charts. It takes a few minutes before Hwanwoong loses himself in his own little world, and eventually he pushes Youngjo's half-side smile from the projector in his head. 

++

It's eerie in the tunnel. All of the service lights are on so it doesn't look like a haunted house, and the uncanny feeling is starting to fade now that he's been in here for a few days. He sets his things down by the Sebastian animatronic at the 'Under the Sea' stop- right where the operator said they had to pull guests off- and gets to work inspecting the surrounding mechanisms.

Hwanwoong isn't _avoiding_ Youngjo, per se, but he isn't making a point of crossing paths with him like the majority of staff do. He’s used to running into people willing to use others for their own gain, and he’s used to taking the brunt of an attack if it means keeping someone else safe. Too many of his friends have been hurt for him not to be hypervigilant. It's always the same look, the same words, same behavior like clockwork.

Same result every time.

He sees those traits in Youngjo, and his red flags go up. 

Aish, but why should he be worried? Hwanwoong and Youngjo are bound by the same rules, but in the end, he's better at playing the game. Plus, all auxiliary departments start their days way earlier than anyone else, so he doesn’t even have to worry about any antics for at least the next four hours.

It takes him most of the morning to make heads or tails of the circuitry, plus some of the afternoon to determine which piece, specifically, is giving him trouble, but he’s done it.

“Finally!” Hwanwoong takes off his headphones and wipes his forehead. All that’s left is to remove the part and take it back-

“Cool! You finished?”

“ _JESUS F-_ ” Hwanwoong jumps high enough to qualify for the Olympics. “How long have you been standing there?!” 

“Long enough.” Youngjo smirks while Hwanwoong’s heart does a beat for beat rendition of Through the Fire and Flames. “You look cute when you focus.” 

Selectively ignoring that last part, he turns his attention back to the belt. God, could he get any more cringey? _Let Youngjo do as he pleases,_ he thinks, _there’s work to be done_. His fingers grip around the edges of the part and pull. No luck. 

“I’m going to assume you didn’t come here to scare me.”

He pulls again, harder. Nothing.

“Nah, just wanted to hang out. I'm on break from the kiddies for the next ten minutes." 

"That must be nice" 

He pulls again. Damn, who assembled this thing? 

"Can't complain. Do you want me to get it? You look like you could use a hand." 

There’s something in the tone of his voice, or maybe it was the arrangement of words, which ticks him off. Youngjo sounds like all the other chowderheads who used their size to justify bossing others around. Hwanwoong isn't insecure, but he _hates_ being underestimated. 

And spite is one hell of a drug. 

With a burst of rage-induced strength, the defective piece comes flying out of the track. He leans back to put an extra few inches of distances between them.

Hwanwoong looks him dead in the eye. “Got it.” 

Youngjo’s still in his full outfit with his hair curled and sprayed just so; a stark contrast from the grey jumpsuit all Ops personnel wore. The difference between them simultaneously makes his heart clench and his ‘I dislike this’ meter discover a new level. 

“Is there anything I can do for you? I have more work.” Putting up the business-formal front, he shrugs a ‘sorry better luck next time’, intent on there never being a ‘next time’.

“Mind if I stick around?” 

With his back facing Youngjo, he’s free to roll his eyes as hard as he wants. He isn’t a complete asshole, as much as he wishes he was. The platitudes come easy. 

“Suit yourself.” 

Hwanwoong is an acquired taste. Lots of coworkers and fellow students and even some friends consider his cold, logical approach and unwavering stubbornness to be character flaws, but they're just personality traits, the same way that his fierce need to protect others and his eagerness to help were also his traits. He assumes the silence would be enough of a hint and Youngjo would feel awkward enough to leave.

He assumes incorrectly. 

“So tell me about yourself.” he starts almost immediately after Hwanwoong sets down his box again, this time at ‘Kiss the Girl’. 

"What? Why?" 

"I wanna get to know you, silly. You interest me." 

He shoots him a look. It’s like he _expects_ Hwanwoong to answer, just like that. No formalities, no nothing... Some people were naturally curious- like Keonhee, who explored everything with a childlike wonder, or Dongju, who dug for answers to stop his brain from picking itself apart- but the ambitious intelligence that hoards knowledge for the sake of having it is an entirely different beast. 

“There’s not much to know.” he states, throwing out an abbreviated version of the last six years; one vague enough that it could be anyone’s story. If Youngjo thought he could unlock Hwanwoong’s past like a special achievement in a video game, he’s sorely mistaken. His follow ups get the same faux-descript answers, and eventually he gets the hint that Hwanwoong doesn’t want to talk and finally stops prying. 

After the longest ten minutes of his life, ‘Prince Eric’ finally returns to the land of makebelieve and throws out some farewell that echoes down the tunnel. 

Hwanwoong doesn’t return it.

++

Hwanwoong wants to get repairs done ASAP, but he can’t force the manufacturers to send him supplies any faster than 5-10 business days so in the meantime he chips away at the long list of upgrades that need to be made to the rest of the ride. 

Youngjo greets him every time he's on shift, which is almost every day, and it’s horrible. By some blackmail or another, he figured out that Hwanwoong's greatest weakness is bubble tea and has been bringing large vanilla’s with tapioca to Under the Sea before his shift officially starts at 1:00. This is also how Youngjo friended him on Instagram ( _"Don't you dare play venmo pingpong with me Youngjo I swear to the constellation Vulpicula" "That's very specific")_ and why he regularly gets videos of baby sloths and micropigs dm'ed to him at odd hours of the night. He can physically feel his resolve slipping which results in a bad habit of revealing too much until he realizes what he's doing and shuts his big, dumb mouth. Youngjo always smiles a bit too wide when he sees Hwanwoong’s mental ‘I need to stop myself immediately’ lightbulb go off, and he always manages to remember every detail, no matter how trivial.

Hwanwoong doesn't consider himself special though- Youngjo has tons of friends. On the three occasions he clicked on the profile with the little white dog ("her name is Sunny and she is my princess and I love her more than anything in the entire world"), he saw upwards of 500 followers and a litany of tagged pictures. Besdies, Youngjo also drops off drinks for three other people besides him, and he seems to have a revolving door of conversational partners. It’s no big deal. Hwanwoong thanks the man quietly while whisking his tea away like it’s a formal business transaction, and he swears to himself that Youngjo is imagining the fun things he’ll do with his friends when he smiles fondly after each 'you're welcome'. 

++

Hwanwoong _loves_ the postal system. They're just _great_.

...

Kidding, he's two right hooks away from fighting FedEx. 

His package was supposed to be at Shipping and Receving yesterday but _of course_ they sent it to the wrong Disney, which means that it got carted back to its country of origin and he’s going to have to submit the order all over again and wait. Again.

At least this gives him time to help out the others. Moonbyul doesn’t object to having an extra pair of competent hands on deck. The resort is right on the waterfront with its individual bungalows in a circle around the edge. _It’s quite nice_ , he thinks while climbing up to the rafters of the main lobby, _someone is going to pay a pretty penny to stay here._ Hwanwoong carefully lets go of the lighting fixture and waits for a sign of catastrophe.

“DID YOU GET IT?” One of the older guys, Chuck, asks. He looks like the kind of person whose autobiography would start in the Mesozoic era. The light is swaying, swaying….. 

“All good!” 

“What?”

“ALL GOOD!”

“ _WHAT???_ ” 

Hwanwoong forfeits the game of geriatric telephone and instead does a double thumbs up. 

They’re still about two months out, but it’s coming along, and Hwanwoong can’t wait to see how it’ll look during the grand opening. One of the most rewarding parts of his job is being able to see the projects he put together by hand, the ones he troubleshooted into the late hours of the night, coming to life and bringing joy to thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. 

It’s why he applied for Disney in the first place. 

Back in college, it was common to hear classmates talk about their degree like a variable in their calculation rather than a true joy. Engineering was a way to make money, and money was what they would need to retire. The mentality was that they’d suffer through four years of undergraduate, then two years of post-grad, then forty-three years at a desk in order to retire with a nice number in their bank accounts, but what for? Just to be 65 and old and _then_ have the free time to pursue hobbies? It’s a recipe for misery in his book. Why not pick a major of genuine interest and then use it to give back in a rewarding way? He won’t make as much money, but if he could walk into the park and see families enjoying themselves through the things that he’d built…

That would be enough. 

“Hwanwoong! Get down from there!” Moonbyul’s voice brings him out of his daydream. “We’re getting lunch!” 

He looks back along the beam he’s sitting on and follows the rungs down to where his mentor and coworkers are all standing. Even if he did have some bad days, he wouldn’t trade it for the world. 

“Coming!” 

++

 _Youngjo came to visit. Asked about you_ Keonhee texts him. 

_I’m with the others_ Hwanwoong replies. He orders his T-bird with a twist from the truck and adds _That’s creepy_

They sit in a parking lot ten mintues out of the way; one of those spots that only the locals know about. The guy who runs the sandwich truck gives them a little extra as thanks for their continued patronage, and they sit in a messy line on the curb like a bunch of heathens, chowing down on their sandwiches. Moonbyul is right next to him Major League Eating her way through a Reuben every time they do this. She wipes off her mouth after absolutely demolishing her lunch. 

“How’s Under the Sea going? Rory told me what happened. You had to reorder new parts for the belt?”

All heads turn to him. It's much more interesting than the Polynesian resort since they're all working together and everyone knows each other’s business. He decides against telling his mentor about his friendly neighborhood Disney prince- the same one who has apparently had more hookups than thre are legs on a millipede and who Hwanwoong should really not associate with for the sake of his sanity- and shakes his head . It wouldn’t do his reputation any good. 

“It’s fine.” He smiles, “Everything is fine.”

++

It’s a shitty day, and Hwanwoong is not in the mood for Youngjo’s games. The couple in 36 got back together yet again and had one of their infamous midnight rows which ended in the vicinity of 2am and with a handwritten note washi-taped to their door. He hasn’t eaten breakfast and his body is screaming for coffee or a Monster or maybe even lighter fluid at this point. He was ~~hiding~~ strategically working in a corner of Ops no one regularly visits so he wouldn’t have to deal with him (or anyone else, for that matter) today but apparently the gods of chaos just _love_ laughing in his face. It’s not _fair_ that he looks that good in his off-duty clothes. None of this is fair. Youngjo may like to weasel his way into other people’s minds for fun, but Hwanwoong is so tired that he has the mental and emotional capacity of a kiddie pool. 

"Good morning." He says without looking up from his work. After all that shipping mess, the piece he received was defective. The replacement he received looks ok, but he doesn’t want to risk putting it in without a thorough check; something that’s almost impossible when he feels himself drifting off to sleep while still upright. 

"Woah, who ruined your day?" 

Youngjo is quick to pick up on the tension- he’ll give him that. Hwanwoong has to tell himself not to bite off his head. 

"Nothing. Couldn't sleep." 

"I can relate." 

Hwanwoong’s vision is swimming. Hopefully that look Youngjo is giving him means he’ll show some mercy and not grill him like he usually does. One of the old rolley chairs comes swinging around so Youngjo can sit on it backward. 

“Want a boost?” The ice inside of his canteen rattles around as he shakes it, the motion completing the question. 

"What is it?" 

"I haven't poisoned it, relax." 

Hwanwoong narrows a glare at him. He reaches out only to have the canteen pulled away from him. He tries again, same result, then realizes what Youngjo is asking. 

Is he really going to put aside his pride and let this guy walk all over him just so he can get some caffeine? 

Heck yeah he is. 

Hwanwoong leans in with his mouth open, meeting Youngjo halfway to reach the straw. The walls keeping his inner core safe stay only half-built with the lack of energy, letting the odd intimacy of the moment take root. He'll be thinking about this for the next few hours; he knows it. The cold sensation flows through his chest and into his stomach and maybe this is what Frankenstein’s monster felt during that lightning storm. 

"Thank you."

Youngjo almost seems disappointed that he can’t hand-feed Hwanwoong longer. “You can have more, if you’d like.” 

He inches the canteen closer only to have it pushed back by an open palm. “It’s alright. Thank you, though.” 

With his heartbeat not pounding in his ear, he can finish up the inspection and mark it down on his clunky laptop. The suspicious silence does not go unnoticed, Hwanwoong speeding through his email just so he can look up faster. Youngjo has his chin on his forearms and looks up at him with a dreamy look he instantly hates and is wary of. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

In the beat of silence, Youngjo smiles. 

“Indirect kiss.” 

Hwanwoong wonders why he even tries. 

++

He’s not sure why he tells Keonhee and Dongju this. All they do is tease him.

“I’m the planet above Disaster Mountain.” Hwanwoong dramatically throws his face into Keonhee’s Ikea couch, the one that he helped build and is therefore allowed to wallow in, “I can never face him again. This is my fate."

“He likes you so much, I’m dying. What are you gonna do, avoid him forever? That’s impossible!” Keonhee laughs. 

If that were an option, he would definitely take it, but as long as Hwanwoong has to work there and Youngjo is Prince Eric, the probability that they run into each other is too high. It probably is impossible.

But he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try. 

“That sounds like a challenge.” 

Dongju snorts. “Good luck out there.” 


	3. When the Night is Over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this is the first scene I wrote!

There’s a growing sea of people flooding the auditorium, and Hwanwoong has never been much of a water creature. 

The only person he’d even consider speaking to is Keonhee, whose voice is ricocheting off of the vaulted ceiling of the events center. The chef and his weird foodie chef-friends are already off their rockers on a bottle of bubbly and the general good-will of Lee Minhyuk and Jackson Wang screaming Bohemian Rhapsody into the shoddy karaoke machine Kate from Advertising dredged out of her basement. It’s awful. Dongju would have agreed too if he hadn't disappeared fifteen minutes ago.

All things considered, Disney’s site-wide celebrations aren’t bad. It basically comes down to an hour or two of watching his coworkers act like imbeciles Safety Dance-style, then he can sneak back into the food line to fill up the Tupperware containers he’s stashed in his backpack. He’ll grab a beer, say goodnight to his boss (offer to walk him back, anticipate being told to go enjoy himself while he’s young) and make his grand escape to the bus station where the late-night driver, Oscar, will either be 10 minutes late at best or a no-show at worst. In a way he feels bad about all the effort that goes into shindigs like this, but then he remembers that Disney has a stupid amount of money and shoves more chicken marsala into a box.

At least the others look like they’re having fun. The guys from Landscaping are chatting with the girls from Design and it looks like someone turned Dongju's coworkers loose onto the makeshift dance floor. He has to admit- it’s amazing to see all the imagineers, marketers, analysts, cast, maintenance-

_Wait a minute_

Hwanwoong looks over at the now-vacant space in the cluster of cast members, between Michelle (Rapunzel) and Jamie (Snow White), eyes flicking across the room until he sees a head of perfectly tousled black hair connected to a nice dress suit walking towards him like he owns the place, and he prepares for impact in 3, 2, 1-

“Hwanwoong!” 

He takes a deep breath. 

“Good evening.” 

“I wouldn't have guessed this was your kind of scene.” Youngjo’s voice is too breathy, too addictive, and _oh_ , that’s not _fair._ A heavy arm flies around him, as though they were two friends getting ready to sing a drunken ballad at 1am in the local pub, but they are _not_ friends, even if Hwanwoong _did_ ruin his ‘I’ll fight ye to the death’ image while he was sleep-deprived. Youngjo winks in the vague direction of his fellow cast members and pulls him closer. 

“You look good tonight.” He says with his lips just barely grazing against Hwanwoong’s ear. The motion is almost enough to make him blush, but it occurs to him that this is probably a tactic he uses whenever he wants something. He rolls his eyes. 

Of _course_ Youngjo would be here, trying to Disney Prince his way into Hwanwoongs’s pants. 

He moves away before he can do something else mortifying like kiss his hand again or kiss his face. 

“It's not. Dongju dragged me here.” Youngjo makes a show of rubbing his shoulder, and Hwanwoong shrugs it off to make his opinion of Mr. So-and-So apparent. The people from the cast circle turn back to their own little pod of coworkers, thank goodness. 

“Sounds like a good friend.”

“He threatened to wipe my save files on Sapphire Blue.” 

The comment gets a laugh out of Youngjo, who clearly has no idea how big of a deal Pokemon is and thus is an atrocious candidate for a potential partner if Hwanwoong ever needed more evidence. 

“He doesn’t joke around, huh?” 

“I mean--” Hwanwoong gnaws on his lip while his eyes flick to anywhere that isn't Youngjo. He spots Dongju following Kim Geonhak, one of the nice young men from Animal Kingdom who definitely didn’t get his specialization in African wildlife for this. “He’s got a few screws loose.” 

They watch in bewilderment, Geonhak letting out a startled yelp as he pokes a puffy cheek and is met with jaws snapping shut right in front of him. It looks like his legs are about to give out, poor guy.

“... I'm gonna go get him before your friend gives him a heart attack.” 

“Yeah that’s a good idea.”

He watches until Youngjo is fully engaged with the two, one arm occupied by the large man clinging to it, the other making some vague gestures that will hopefully convince Dongju to spare them. Hwanwoong makes a quick mental calculation and determines the man is sufficiently distracted. He says goodnight to his boss, snags a can of beer off the back table, and slips out. 

++

The Sonic theme is playing in his head in between the _nananananana_ part of the Batman intro. It’s a tragedy he couldn’t take more food home but it’s worth it if it means he makes a clean escape. He checks his watch again. 

_6:39_

The bus will be here soon. All he has to do is wait it out, get on, and things will go back to the way they were. Hwanwoong will finish repairs sooner rather than later and never see each other again ever. He checks his watch again. 

_6:40_

Dammit!

“Wait up!” 

Hwanwoong’s heart sinks. Apparently he _hasn’t_ escaped yet. Splendid. Awesome. Maybe if he pretends like he doesn’t hear Youngjo, he’ll go away. 

...

Nah, he’s not going anywhere. If anything, it makes him jog faster down the block to catch up. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“About?” 

“Does it always need to be a reason? I’d like to talk to you. You’re strange. I want to get to know you better.” 

_There he goes with the trophy cabinet..._ An angry hum reverberates in Hwanwoong’s chest. 

“That's great but I really need to head home.” 

“Go home? Now?” Youngjo’s perfectly shaped eyebrows pull in in confusion. "This early?" 

“Yeah, I need to do stuff. Things.”

“What kind of things?”

“ _Yes_.” He smirks, starting to walk away. If Oscar isn’t in an age-induced stupor, he should be there pretty soon and he can get away from all this. He glances back to see Youngjo’s head is down, fists balled. 

“ _Hwanwoong_.” 

He stops. 

He shouldn’t have stopped, but he cares too much about what other people are feeling, even if he isn’t willing to share his own feelings himself. 

“What?”

“Answer me one thing." This is it, this is where he snaps and Hwanwoong becomes the opening scene to an episode of CSI. “Why do you dislike me so much? I mean… at first I thought I’d just caught you on a bad day, so then I tried coming back. I had some hope once I started bringing bubble tea along, but even then, we don’t even talk on Instagram. I assumed you would tell me if you didn’t want me around, but you haven’t, so I’m confused. Did I do something to you?” 

The desperation is pure and heartbreaking. 

Hwanwoong sighs. 

_What a mess_. 

He didn’t ask Youngjo to like him. It would be _easier_ if he didn't like him. Hwanwoong opens his mouth to explain, but realizes that the terms he’s about to use won’t make any sense to Youngjo. 

Because he himself doesn’t even know why he's doing this. 

Because Hwanwoong is the only one who has it in his head that he needs to stay away from Youngjo to sabotage whatever it is he’s trying to achieve. Youngjo is winning this game that only Hwanwoong is playing, and it hits him how childish he’s been this entire time. 

He feels small next to Youngjo. Smaller than he has in a long time. 

Every weekend he’d argue that it was his perfectly-functioning sense of self-preservation keeping him safe from an obviously dangerous man. 

Keonhee was probably right when he argued back that it was prejudice. 

“No, you haven’t done anything,” he admits, “I… knew some people, from before. Ones who only told lies. Their words were nothing but daggers and false diamonds. We people, as smart as we may be… we don’t change. We become better at jumping through hoops and chasing our own tails but at the core of it all, I’m still me, and you’re still you. So I was waiting to see when you would shed your friendliness and prove that anyone who seems too good to be true, is. But that’s not who you are. I misjudged you, and for that, I’m sorry.” 

The words that flow don’t feel like his. They feel like the answer a computer would spit out, and in a way, the lifelessness in it makes it easier to say. He expects Youngjo to be infuriated. He expects him to call him out on his behavior, which Hwanwoong wouldn’t even fight him over because he deserves it.

But Youngjo just laughs, quietly, and he shakes his head in a sad little way that sends a heavy weight into the pit of Hwanwoong’s stomach. 

“I take it you heard the rumors? Donna and company seem to love playing telephone with my personal life.” 

His first reaction is to deny it, but there’s no point.The same way that Hwanwoong is able to determine who he’ll need to verbally fight, Youngjo can recognize who sees him as _him_ and who sees him as the culmination of rumors and expectations. 

He probably isn’t the first to misjudge Youngjo. 

He probably won’t be the last. 

“Let’s start over.” Hwanwoong blurts, because it’s the only thing he can think of. He sticks out his hand. “Yeo Hwanwoong. Facilities and Operations. My favorite tree to climb is the banyan and I have an inordinate fascination with duct tape crafts.”

His hand stays outstretched until it’s enveloped in one much larger than his. 

“Kim Youngjo. Cast. I’m best friends with Prince Eric and I personally think my dad jokes are amazing.”

The handshake is firm, just the way it was the first time, and just like then, Youngjo brings Hwanwoong’s hand up and his lips down. But this is absolutely _not_ happening and he pulls his hand away so he can slap him on the shoulder. 

“Oi! Knock it off, Romeo.” The bus is rounding the corner. He’ll be out of here in a minute flat. Youngjo laughs at the new name. 

“Sorry, force of habit.”

“I’m sure you’re a hit with that.” 

“I don’t do it too often, just with people I want to leave an impression on.” he says, winking, and Hwanwoong cringes so hard he can feel ten years of his lifespan withering away just like that.

The late-night driver opens the door to let him on, and he can hear the figure on the other side of the scratched-up window shouting a farewell at him. 

Hwanwoong returns it this time. 

++

Getting along with Youngjo is surprisingly easy. He’s slow to warm up at first, but Youngjo starts staying with him after his shifts _on top_ of his erratically-scheduled midday breaks, and he lets Hwanwoong rant his way through an explanation about the daily headache he’s dealing with until he suddenly has an epiphany and fixes the problem. 

This, of course, only leads to new problems, but at least he’s making progress. 

On days when Youngjo is hungry but he can’t leave his station and he can’t get his makeup or hands dirty because he’ll be touching people and _that’s_ _unsanitary_ , _Hwanwoong_ , _I have to be around little kids and adults, I can’t be smelling like I grabbed a fish out of the ocean and rubbed myself with it_ Hwanwoong will smack him in the shoulder and then hand-feed him whatever sushi or bibimbap he's thrown together for himself. 

"I bet Keonhee would teach you some new dishes if you asked." He half-smiles after swallowing some rice. Hwanwoong whacks him on the kneecap with his metal spoon. 

"Don't insult my cooking!" he chides, not wanting to admit that it’s already on the agenda for next Saturday. Keonhee had offered to teach him the second Hwanwoong told him what happened post-party, though he’d been too stubborn to accept it until recently. 

“Kidding, kidding… it’s good. Thanks.”

Youngjo pops a piece of gum in his mouth and goes back to his station. 

“No problem.” 

++

If it were physically possible to jerk off Saturday to make it come faster, he would have done it. Every muscle in Hwanwoong’s body is in pain from carrying supplies to and from his post and by the time 6:00 rolls around, he’s more than ready to be out of the park. He takes a different bus so he can swing by Walmart before he heads home for the day. The fridge is bare besides a sad jar of pasta sauce and a box of canned seltzer. It feels like he’s back in college, and not in a good way. 

“You want anything?” Hwanwoong asks Dongju from the snack aisle, which he doesn’t, thanks though. Just as his voice is trailing off, he jumps back in. 

“ _Waitwaitwait_!!!” 

Hwanwoong snaps the phone back to his ear. “What?”

“Invite Youngjo!” 

It must be the misalignment of the stars or a quick demon possession that makes him almost fall over. 

Yeah. That must be it. 

“I can't _invite_ him, have you lost your mind???”

"'Can't' isn't the same as 'don't want to'~" He sings back, making Hwanwoong regret his entire existence. "Come on, it'll be fun!" 

“I can’t do it.” He holds firm.

“You ‘can’t’ or you’re too chicken?” 

“I mean we aren’t at that level of friendship yet.”

This grabs his friend’s attention. “Oh? What level are we at?”

“At least level 10. You need to be like... a level 5 to do outside-of-work hangouts.” 

“Damn, Woong, I’m honored and shit.” Dongju laughs, "Tell you what- forget about it. I’ll deal with him _if_ you do me a favor." 

Hwanwoong crosses his arms. "Name it." 

"Kim Geonhak. Big guy from Animal Kingdom?"

"I've seen him." 

"Invite him." 

Hwanwoong narrows his eyes. Usually they do first meetings at Keonhee's because it's central and he knows how to lighten up a room. It's off from Dongju's usual modus operandi which means he must be serious.

Dongju _never_ strays from his rules. 

"And you’ll deal with Youngjo?” He confirms, still wary, but Dongju snickers because they both know that this is essentially a handshake. 

“Like Strangers on a Train.”

++

Seoho met Hwanwoong after a power outage that left him trapped in the incubation room, which wasn’t so bad besides the fact that he _really_ needed to pee. Their relationship consists of links to YouTube videos and memes (pretty standard for people their age) and as luck would have it, he sees Geonhak on a regular basis at work.. Hwanwoong sends a text to Dongju asking if he can bring the 'guy from the reptile pit' over for ramen on Saturday to which he agrees, if and only if he doesn't bring any snakes. Seoho is more than happy to be away from the hatchery and to have weekend plans that consist of something other than Animal Crossing and laundry. 

When they get to the entrance of Kilimanjaro Safari, Geonhak is preoccupied with setting out the popsicles for the large cats. 

It gives Seoho an idea costing $2 and a trip to the staff vending machine. 

"Afternoon, Hak!" A cherry popsicle slips into his mouth between the sounds of 'hello', but he doesn't start coughing so Hwanwoong takes it as a win. 

"Wh-?"

"Popsicle for a large cat." 

Geonhak rolls his eyes so hard that only the whites show for a second.. 

"Hey Ho. What's up?" 

Instead of a response, he sidesteps and points at Hwanwoong and _right, ok, words-_

"Keonhee, Ju, Seoho and I are meeting up this weekend. Wanna come?" 

He doesn’t blame Geonhak for being a little suspicious. "Maybe? What are you doing?" 

"Nothing much, just dinner, board games, standard stuff." 

"Board game?" He ticks his head to the side like a confused puppy, or maybe an overgrown, confused cat. It's kinda cute, if he's honest. It makes sense why Dongju likes him so much. It’ll be good for him to have someone around who can combat his prickly personality. 

"Board games not your jam?" Hwanwoong says with a burst of confidence. 

"Do you have Settlers of Catan?" The way he asks is so honest that Hwanwoong can’t keep up his ‘tough guy’ act. He leans back onto his foot and tells him that yeah, they do, and he’ll tell Keonhee to bring it with him. Geonhak is a good eater and a board game enthusiast, so he agrees with little second thought and gives Hwanwoong his number. 

“We usually get together on Saturday’s around 5 or 6. I’ll send you the address.” 

The whole situation is a romantic comedy thinly-veiled under the disguise of a night with coworkers. Poor guy doesn’t even know what’s about to hit him. 

“Sounds good. See you then!” 

Dongju almost kills him when Hwanwoong refuses to share the digits, but he holds firm. 

If Dongju wants them, he’s going to have to earn them himself. 

++

“When you said ‘deal with Youngjo’, I didn’t think you meant _this_!’ Hwanwoong hisses quietly enough so Youngjo doesn’t hear them from the living room. 

Dongju has a ridiculously large apartment for someone his age and this area. He also has a movie pit, and Hwanwoong would be complaining about how unfair it is because Dongju doesn't even use it that much if it weren't for Dongju saying he can come over any time he wants.

He lives with his twin, Dongmyeong, but he's usually camping out at one of his bandmates' houses. The lot of them tend to vanish off the face of the earth whenever they're getting ready to release an album. 

“What else could I possibly have meant?! You called in a disaster! You know how much I love watching verbal housefires.”

It would seem to be an act of revenge for not sharing Geonhak’s number, but Hwanwoong _does_ know about Dongju’s propensity to gossip. It’s one of the reasons why HR sends him a Home Depot bucket of goodies every holiday, and why they never have to deal with calls from overly-ambitious business partners. They have a good and terrifying relationship. 

“ _Ugh_ , you’re impossible.” 

“I know. Now get out there and sit with your-”

"DON'T EVEN-" Hwanwoong doesn’t let him add that extra noun.

Dongju’s whole demeanor changes when Geonhak arrives. The scaly exterior turns warm, and Keonhee shares a ‘you’ve gotta be kidding me’ look with Hwanwoong when Geonhak forgets the ‘no shoes’ rule and doesn't incur the wrath of their youngest. 

They argue for a while over the tip and who’s paying whom back, and they finish as Hwanwoong is telling the delivery person lost in the complex’s parking lot that someone will be down in a minute. They manage not to create any new disasters by keeping Dongju away from Geonhak and Youngjo away from Hwanwoong, and the prospect of a peaceful night seems promising. 

And then the board games come out.

It’s a miracle that no one gets sent to the ER- everyone remembers the Great Scrabble Fight of 2018 and the way this group of friends could come for each other’s throats over the littlest things. Dongju and Youngjo are a deadly team on Catan. Seoho and Geonhak end up fighting for most of the game, and their bickering inadvertently reveals all of their special cards. Hwanwoong and Keonhee are content to watch the chaos unfold, and luckily, they don’t have to ban the game like they did with Monopoly, Old Maid, and the rest of the Deadly Seven. 

After a full night of fun and promises to do it again, they see out Seoho, Geonhak, and Youngjo with only two bruises between them.

As far as they count, the night is a success.

++

Their group size seemingly doubles overnight. Seoho and Geonhak say hi to him before they jump on their ATV’s and head to their offices. Keonhee sees Youngjo for special events at the resorts and they chat while families do boring things in the atrium. All six of them crowd inside of apartments only meant for one person, two max, and make enough noise for 12. For the first time, 36 puts a note on _his_ door to keep it down while they’re on a group video call trying to get Youngjo in trouble at some charity event he doesn’t want to be at.  
They all become close.

It doesn’t hit Hwanwoong that he’s become particularly close to Youngjo until half of his answers to questions on any given topic involve Youngjo, but it really punches him in the face when he realizes that his friends don’t have to ask who he’s talking about when he starts off his sentences with ‘Hyung and I’. 

He isn’t entirely sure how it happened- it feels like just yesterday he was making like a bat out of hell, but right now he’s standing at the edge of the living room in Seoho's apartment holding his bowl of burning-hot pho, trying to figure out how things turned out like this and how he’s going to get back to his spot on the weird rug Geonhak bought them as a housewarming gift. He steps over Dongju and in the gaps between Keonhee’s legs.

“What should we watch?”

Youngjo shuffles beside him, and suddenly it's like all his senses are on high alert and he feels the urge to run. He’s so close, close enough where Hwanwoong can feel the hot spotlight of self-consciousness, and like he’ll burn if it stays on him any longer. 

"Hey.... you ok?" 

"Yeah, I'm fine." Hwanwoong coils in on himself tighter, squashing down the feeling of want in his chest to a place where he can box it up.

"Are you sure? You look a little cold." 

In one smooth motion, Youngjo picks him up and drags him close, wrapping himself around with warmth and comfort and it hurts, _it hurts_ , like being too close to the sun, and Hwanwoong is a creature of the night. 

"It's ok, I've got you." He whispers, settling his head on Hwanwoong's shoulder, and inside he feels the warmth drip into his core as his molten heart melts. 

++

Youngjo is the first to get up. His back makes sounds like it’s the fourth of July and Dongju calls him an old man, lovingly. The ringlet of keys attached to an eight ball swings into the palm of his hand. 

“I gotta go. I brought the bike and it’ll be more dangerous if I ride when it’s dark.” 

They say their goodbye’s, see you on Monday’s, and wait until their eldest friend is gone before resuming the movie. As much as Hwanwoong loves being around them, he can never truly enjoy his takeout when he can feel so many eyes on him. 

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just that you and Jo-hyung…” Keonhee trails off.

“Me and Hyung what?”

“Nothing, I’m just saying~” he responds with feigned innocence, though everyone with five braincells would know what he was insinuating, and they’d officially clocked Geonhak as having at least 8. 

They stick around a little longer trading stories from their workweeks until Seoho starts falling asleep and Dongju realizes his favorite store is going to close in 20 minutes. They all say their goodbye’s and part ways until next weekend, when they’ll do it all again. 

Hwanwoong will be in the same situation, right next to Youngjo, feeling whatever mushy, gross things he was feeling all over again.

The thought alone scares him.

Hwanwoong mumbles a ‘thanks’ to Oscar as he gets off at the stop in front of his apartment complex. It’s late and it’s dark and fine, ok, maybe he _does_ feel a little lonesome without Youngjo next to him. His mind is too crowded with every possible scenario playing out and it feels too meta that "Without Love" is vibrating through apartment 27's walls and the couple in 36 sounds like they’re on their way to break up #987. Hwanwoong doesn’t want to fully walk out of his self-imposed emotional quarantine, but he also doesn’t want to get hurt. 

But there’s no use stressing about it now. He’ll sit on it, figure himself out. 

And if the answer is what the others have been suggesting…. 

Well... 

He’ll burn that bridge when he gets there. 

++

Their plans to try out the new ice cream place very suddenly and miraculously fall apart. One of the clutches hatched early so Seoho went running full steam ahead back to the park with little more than a snake emoji, and that would be fine except Dongju is helping Geonhak be an actual legal adult who does taxes and Keonhee is camping out at his parent’s house because his place is being fumigated, which means it’s only going to be him and Youngjo. And that’s totally fine! Their meeting is a totally normal, not at all special, completely casual hangout between friends.

Ok so maybe isn't totally fine and he _is_ a little nervous.

Hwanwoong spends most of the morning tied up with his extensive skincare routine because he wants to look like a passable excuse for a human and not some basement-swamp creature hybrid with no sense of self-care when he and Youngjo meet. He does a final once-over before running out the door and onto the bus. 

++

Youngjo is more of a fruit sorbet person. It’s not something Hwanwoong would have pinned him as, but watching him suck on a spoonful of raspberry in utter bliss, it makes so much sense. Youngjo is in his own world scraping up every last bit of sticky sugar, only breaking concentration to point at the blue cookie monster milkshake Hwanwoong is two-handing and look at him with the grossest amount of adoration. Hwanwoong’s knee jerk reaction is to thwack him the arm. It works for all of about two minutes, then Youngjo is back to staring at him like he’s a newborn kitten. 

_Thwack_

_Look_

_Thwack_

_Look_

_…_

_Glare_

_Thwack_

That’s probably why he doesn’t notice her approaching them. Somewhere between Hwanwoong using the power of suction to inhale a few drops of cookie dough and winding up a _thwack_ , he sees someone vaguely familiar on the sidewalk that runs behind them. Her name is something like Alana or Elena (Hwanwoong met her, briefly, where was it?), and she’s part of the Marketing team. She’s coming awfully close, he thinks, right before he realizes that her outstretched hand is so she can grab Youngjo’s attention. 

“Youngjo! Hi! Sorry to interrupt,” She says, though clearly she has no problem with it. Alana (Elena?) doesn’t even acknowledge Hwanwoong, which is fine. At least now he can drink his milkshake in peace. “I was hoping to pass you in the underground yesterday, but the others said you’d left.” 

“Ah, sorry, I had some business to attend to,” he says. What business that might be, he isn’t sure- the only thing Youngjo did yesterday was pester Hwanwoong about the probability of opening a real-life Five Nights and Freddy’s until Hwanwoong kicked him out of the Ops headquarters. 

Hwanwoong wants to tell her off, but instead he stands by like a polite guest as she continues. “I was wondering if you wanted to hang out sometime.”

The sentence makes his blood simmer. He’s been underestimated. Yet again. Hwanwoong doesn’t register as any kind of threat to her. She has no manners, if Hwanwoong ever needed a reason to argue that she wasn’t potential partner material. 

"What I’m trying to say is, can I take you on a date?" 

“Sorry, I don’t date.” he gives her a curt smile, no teeth, and that’s the end of that. 

The hairs on the back of Hwanwoong’s neck stand on end. He’s heard this before. It always comes after someone is bored with their toy and wants to play with something new and shiny. And in this case, the new toy is Hwanwoong, who spent so much time and effort making sure to keep his distance only to be blinded by Youngjo’s words and glances. There’s no one to blame besides himself for falling. No matter what Youngjo says, Hwanwoong is always going to hear those words in the back of his mind, and his body will remember the way it broke while helping get his friends back onto their feet. He realizes with a sickened twisting that it means nothing. 

Hwanwoong is just some idiot who flew too close to the sun thinking he was special enough to reach it .

Of course it means nothing. 


	4. I'll Come Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll deal with editing the big paragraphs at some point

Welcome back to ‘Hwanwoong being a Social Disaster’ Part 2: Electric Boogalo. 

They’re playing the most dangerous game of cat and mouse except it’s more like a game of coyote and roadrunner where Youngjo tries to get as close to talking distance as possible and Hwanwoong tries to do the Houdini. Moonbyul doesn't question why Hwanwoong wants to go with her on vendor visits- it gives her some company and Hwanwoong; a chance to stare out the window like he’s in a melodramatic music video so he can process his thoughts. 

"Ready?"

"Yeah." 

The rumble of the engine is like the tick off a metronome, lulling him into a sleep-like state. 

Maybe he can distract himself long enough to give his mind a break.

...yeah, no, not happening. What _is_ it about him that makes Hwanwoong like this? 

Youngjo is the antithesis of everything Hwanwoong stands for. Youngjo is open and friendly and professes his love when and because he feels it. Hwanwoong doesn’t share his problems, and he certainly doesn’t share his inner hopes and dreams. Those are much too fragile. Hwanwoong is open with certain pieces of information; the ones that are inconsequential. He shares enough about himself to stop people from digging, and he does so convincingly enough to make them think that isn’t the case. The only one who has ever seen past his facade is his grandmother. He’d like to keep it that way. 

Relationships don't make any sense. They are not logical, and there is no amount of preparing he can do to make sure they go smoothly. There are no guarantees. There is only uncertainty and a droplet of hope which turns the murky water a pretty shade.

He's seen it a million times, but he's determined to be different. He's going to do so well, and he'll do it alone because he can't rely on other people. There's no point in relying on others because they'll just leave or they'll leave scars, and then he'll look back and ask why he ignored all the signs. Did he really not see them? Or did he see only what he wanted to see? There isn't a difference at the end of the tunnel, not when it leads back to the start, the same as it looked before this mess. And he'll be older and wiser and so much more hurt than the him that left there an eternity ago. 

It isn't worth it. 

Youngjo isn't worth this. 

++

He doesn’t remember what happens at work, only that he went and crossed some things off of his eternal ‘to do' list. 

He waits on the corner for the bus to come by, idly scrolling through Pintrest. Hwanwoong takes a step back away from the curb as headlights cover him in a gritty yellow light. When it doesn’t fade into the distance, he looks up. 

_Are you kidding me_

“Hey there, stranger.” Youngjo's smile is so bright it hurts to look at. “Need a ride?” 

“No, that’s alright. I like the bus. Thank you though.”

“Is it ok if I stick around? Keep you company until the bus gets here.” 

“Suit yourself.”

The silence is awkward and tense; heavy like a storm, though Hwanwoong is willing to sit through it. Youngjo lasts maybe 10 seconds before he gets uncomfortable.

“It’s been a while. How are things in Ops?” 

Hwanwoong has told him just about everything that goes on in his department from wrangling with vendors to how Dmitri’s ‘good afternoon’ grunt makes him sound more like a vexed caveman. Youngjo knows that things don’t change.

Yet he asks because it’s something they can talk about, and at this point it’s better to talk. 

“It’s fine at Ops. Just the usual. What about you?” 

“Nothing much has happened.”

He sees the headlights, round and bright, rounding the corner and shining on him. 

"Bus is here. You don't have to wait." He says, killing that he needs to go, but instead he pulls forward to looks Hwanwoong in the eyes.

“Listen, I… I like you, a lot. And I know we got off to a rough start, but I'd still like to talk to you. The more we talk, the more intrigued I become. I haven't seen you much. Call me sappy, but I miss you.”

_Oh god not again._

He wants to run. It would be so much easier to run. 

Hwanwoong runs because it's easier to bottle himself up and send himself overboard than deal with the fallout, the pain of breaking something so painstakingly put together. He would rather leave things intact and covered in cracks than in pieces, and it's his choice to rip out the parts of himself that still loved deeply for the sake of the rest of him which wanted to stay safe. 

It's safer to run. 

Youngjo is everything Hwanwoong isn't. He's so confident in himself, so wise with his words. He's miles above where Hwanwoong is because he's done more, and sometimes Hwanwoong envies him but he also knows that the only way to get there himself is to go through the process of breaking and healing all over again, but it isn't worth it, none of it is worth it. It isn't worth the heartache just to be wiser on the other side. What difference would it make? Others might call him naïve but he's the kind of person who observes where others have fallen and chooses his path around it. 

It hurts, sometimes, thinking about it. 

It hurts more often than it doesn't. . 

But he's already fallen far too far for there not to be consequences, and fuck this, fuck everything, fuck Youngjo too while he's at it for making his heart race every time he pays special attention to him and for spending all his free time with him and for making him feel this way because Hwanwoong doesn't know how he lived before Youngjo. He doesn't know how he's going to go back, but he has to run and he has to do it now or else he's going to end up a gnarled mess of thorny scars. The sooner he can tear himself away, the less it will hurt, and the easier it will be to convince himself that it wasn't anything but a trick of the light. 

_He doesn’t date_ the loudest and deepest parts of his brain shout together. 

Oscar opens the door. 

“I’ve got to go.” Hwanwoong mumbles. 

“Why do you keep running from me?” 

It would be easy to tell the bus driver to pass by and keep going. 

He would like to tell Youngjo about how he learned to sense danger before it arrived, and how his natural empathy is so fucked that he doesn't feel like he understands humans anymore. He would like to tell him how he's scared of what happens once his head becomes too full of numbers. 

He would like to tell Youngjo a lot of things.

But those are all stories for another time, and another place, a long ways from here where the only person he can torment is himself.

“Sorry.” Is all he says, and he’s gone. 

++

Hwanwoong has a terrible night. 

36 are fighting again and 27 is playing sappy music which is only helping him wallow more. It all ends when the police show up to respond to the noise complaint and the CD finishes its last track, but by then it’s already 3:36 and Hwanwoong knows his sleep schedule is fucked. He wakes up in the afternoon, screams into his pillow, and gets on with his day. 

It's a Herculean effort, stopping himself from bailing on their usual weekend plans.

But these are his _best friends_ , and he could never hide from them.

 _It's only going to be us three_ , he tells himself, _relax_

He almost doesn’t make it onto the bus, but he slips past the doors and into a seat in the back next to the window. He's walking down the unsuspecting suburban street 10 minutes later.

"Evening, y'all."

Keonhee is a generally nice person. Everyone gets along with him, and he holds onto only a small group of tight-knit friends he would do anything for. He likes cooking and sunrise hikes and planting flowers and the pastel color wheel. He plays with his plushies and he named his car Bubbles, and every parent who’s ever met him automatically considers him a part of the family. Keonhee is a gold star friend. 

Keonhee is _livid._

“Yeo Hwanwoong.”

Just the tone sends shivers down his spine because Keonhee is a soft water baby, the only one of their little group, and while he easily slips into the spaces to bind them together, there’s a powerful force behind him like the strength of a silent mountain. 

Hwanwoong has seen it come out twice in the six years they’ve known each other, and one of them was to get out of a literal life-or-death situation. He’s never imagined it being directed at him, and he’s _terrified_. 

“I know.” 

“If you ‘know’, then why did I wake up to four drunk paragraphs from Youngjo about how he doesn’t know what to do with himself.” This isn’t a question. There are no games here. Keonhee isn’t going to throw a fit like a normal person, no…. He cuts deep, precise like a surgeon. He hit right where he knows it will hurt to expose the true wound. 

And he’ll make Hwanwoong stitch himself up just to prove his point. 

Dongju hangs out on the side and sips his mug while watching it all go down in flames. It irks him that he's directing this and not trying to help, but then again, this isn't his problem. It isn't technically Keonhee's either- the only reason they're getting dragged in is because of their friend. 

"Do you know what your problem is?" 

"No, what?" He asks, expecting to be told that he's too cynical for his own good or he has a self-destructive sense of self preservation, or that he's a complete and utter dumbass. Keonhee raises an eyebrow. 

"How should I know? I can't see into your brain. If you don't know what it is, you'd better figure it out." 

_Oh_. “Look, I’ll talk to him.” 

“Whether you talk to him or not is your choice. I won’t tell you what to do, but I _will_ tell you it isn’t fair to the ones who get caught up in it." 

“I know, I'll take care of it. I promise”

“Good. Now sit down. I brought out the flambé torch and we’re going to do some science.” 

++

Hwanwoong knows Keonhee is right. He sends Youngjo a message asking if they can meet to talk, the sooner the better. The entire 27 minutes it takes for him to respond are spent wondering how things could have possibly come to this, but then Youngjo asks where he'd like to go, and he tells Hwanwoong that the cat cafe is fine, and he’ll see him tomorrow at 11:00.

He doesn't sleep much that night despite the serenity in the complex. Even the strange lady from 17's late-night religious rituals aren't as loud as usual and wrap up well before Hwanwoong trudges to his refrigerator at midnight. He sits on the floor with a sad bowl of cereal and a notepad and proceeds to sort through his own emotional baggage. He’s got problems- everyone does- and it’s better to address them now before involving someone else in them.

Hwanwoong doesn't let himself get close to others because he is made of fear, just like everyone else, and he hides the gaps in his armor with distance. 

He is a runner.

Hwanwoong has always been a runner. 

The only one he can ever truly trust is himself. The numerous friends act like a shield to combat the emptiness at his most inner circle, but no matter how many years he's known someone, he still keeps a part of himself hidden just in case he has to tear himself away. If he doesn't give his all, he can't be completely broken. 

But here comes Youngjo with his gentle pushing, so gentle that Hwanwoong doesn’t even realize how far he’s drifted away from the safety of the shore until he's staring down the unfamiliarity of the open ocean. He makes Hwanwoong think the world is not so much a bad place as it is a good place in bad times, and that people are inherently good instead of inherently self-centered. Youngjo circumvented the defenses Hwanwoong put in place to keep himself safe because Youngjo _was_ safe. He probably knows more than most people ever would about him in a fraction of the time. 

Whether it was by accident or intentional, the fact remains that Youngjo slipped through the gaps. Youngjo has seen all of his soft spots and can attack him there if he so chooses, but not everything is a battle, and not everything can be measured in strictly ones and zeroes. He could be genuinely good. Whatever it was they had before he started running again; it could be good.

Or it could be a nightmare.

There's only one way to find out.

++

With another peptalk and too much time overthinking his outfit, Hwanwoong gets on the morning bus. The driver gives him a sort of knowing look, like maybe she can see the nervous energy behind his eyes, but she ultimately says nothing, and he's left to wonder how obvious it is to everyone that he's so anxious.

He's so lost in though that he nearly misses his stop. Hwanwoong manages to pull the chord just in time and gets off the bus, right in front of the-

 _Oh fuch oh fuck oh fuck_ he’s right there in the window. What is he doing here so early? Those extra minutes he thought he’d have to mentally prepare are now minutes he’s lost. Does he wait it out? Has Youngjo spotted him? 

Hwanwoong can feel all of his planning go down the drain as his brain blanks. Can he do this? Really??? Why can't things be easy? He wants to hightail it, but he has to do this- _has_ to.

With a deep breath, he goes inside. 

"Hi! Welcome!" The barista ('Kino :3', his tag reads) calls, effectively running any semblance of cover he might have had. Five heads turn to acknowledge him. Four look back. 

Youngjo is wearing a sweater today, comfy enough to be relaxed yet warm enough for when the sun goes down. He sports wide, rectangle glasses and a simple watch. It looks business-casual. 

Good thing Hwanwoong didn't go in jeans and a graphic shirt.

"Hey, thanks for meeting me here. We... Have a lot to talk about, I guess."

Youngjo greets him with the same gestures normally reserved for guests and he hates it.

"We do. Sit, stay a while."

++

They talk in the cafe until they're comfortable enough to start walking together. A crowded, public place is no place for such conversations. It’s the time of day , and it’s respectably dark to put down these heavy thoughts. They sit on a bench underneath a large tree, one that faces the path so they can see the two or three other people in the vicinity. 

“You know…” Hwanwoong shakes his head, “I didn’t want to like you.” 

That’s how it starts. 

It isn’t elegant, but it’s the truth, and he owes Youngjo, who’s been nothing but kind and understanding this entire time, that much. 

“Why?”

“You…. you’re just so… _perfect_.” He wants to stop himself to assemble the sentences correctly, but his brain leaks the thoughts he’s been bottling up for the past six months directly into his mouth. “Infuriatingly perfect.” 

Youngjo barks out a laugh. “Thank you?” 

“No, I don’t… I don’t mean it in a _bad_ way, it’s just that I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re too good to be true, yet you are, and as much as I wanted to keep my distance, I think it was impossible from the start. I like being around you.”

“I like being around you too. You’re fascinating to listen to. You say what you think, but you know how to be kind too. There are a lot of people who have the knowledge, but not the bedside manner, y’know? And I feel like I can unwind with you. It’s tiring having to pretend to be someone else.” 

It’s an odd statement for someone whose job is to bring a fictional character to life, but he realizes that Prince Eric is not the personality Youngjo is referring to. Youngjo has seen parts of Hwanwoong that seldom so, and at the same time, he’s revealed his own inner faces because at the end of the day, he trusts that he won’t be held to expectations that he didn’t even set himself. 

“You think I’m much braver than I am.” 

An older couple doing what he can only assume is their nightly lap around the park begins to approach them, providing a much-needed lull. They wait until they’ve disappeared behind the fountain to continue. 

It’s Youngjo who breaks the silence. 

"Hwanwoong?” 

“Yeah?”

“Do... you have feelings for me?”

Hwanwoong sighs. _Here it is_. "Yes." 

"As more than a friend?" 

" _Yes_ , as problematic as that might be." 

“Now why would that be problematic when I have feelings for you too?”

Hwanwoong’s heart does gymnastics. Is this real? He looks over to check for any hint of of humor, but Youngjo is so close, so close that his intensity can be felt. 

"Tell me if you want me to stop..."

He leans in, and waits for Hwanwoong to close the gap. Youngjo knows Hwanwoong cannot be pushed into things he doesn't want to do. He needs to be sure of his actions, whether it be something as inconsequential as his 'measure thrice cut once' policy or running repaired rides an extra time just in case. 

Hwanwoong meets him there, and he’s taken to another world.

Youngjo tastes like strawberry milk and tapioca pearls, smooth and sweet and fireplace-warm. He's gentle with the way his hands brush against Hwanwoong's wrists and the pressure of his head tilting forward, but he gets the sense that it's less because he doesn't want to get a black eye and more because he wants to enjoy the moment. 

They break apart- Hwanwoong breaks apart when he feels a tongue brush against his bottom lip. There’s only a second between when Youngjo turns his head and when he parts his mouth further, but it’s enough. 

He isn’t emotionally ready to face him yet, so Hwanwoong rests against Youngjo’s shoulder. His bangs tickle Youngjo’s neck. 

“I thought you didn’t date.” 

He can feel the expression above him changing into a smile. 

“Not casually, no.” 

“So where does that land us?” 

“I like you, Hwanwoong. I’ll say it as many times as it takes to convince you."

"You don't have to. I believe you." 

And for the first time in a long time, Hwanwoong is content to sit there; a full-bodied sense of belonging. It resonates somewhere deep within the walls he built for himself that this is right, and that while he may have worries, he is happy all the same. He feels himself lighten, settling into Youngjo's arms.

“This might sound silly after that, but you never answered me," Youngjo says. Hwanwoong cocks his head in confusion. "You sound like you've got a ton of stories. I'vee got some too. Maybe we could exchange some over coffee sometime?" 

Hwanwoong laughs. Youngjo is many things. He is the hard edges of a motorcycle and the soft fleece of a favorite sweater. He is a voice made of cosmic dust and eyes made of moonlight. He is kindness and a belief in what others may be. 

Youngjo is many things, and right now, he is Hwanwoong’s. 

"I'd love that." 


	5. Epilogue

Hwanwoong has not been on a date in one entire eternity, and Keonhee yelling things to him while Dongju rides Geonhak around the flat like he’s going into a chicken fight joust is not helping. 

“Listen, you’re a tough nut to crack. You’ll be fine.” he says for the tenth time. “And if he does anything, I’ll kill him myself.”

Youngjo is going to be there in less than 20 minutes. 

So no, he will  _ not  _ be fine unless they make three different contingency plans immediately. 

In the middle of Escape Plan #2, his phone rings. 

_ Today, 7:25pm _

Jo: 

Send me your address and I'll come pick you up

Woongie: 

_ Location pin sent  _

I'm apartment 26, just knock when you get here. 

Today, 7:44pm

Jo:

Oh my god 

That’s an odd sort of reaction, but there’s no time to consider it- he needs to figure out the part of Plan #2 after he leaves the country and becomes a cheesemonger in the French Alps. He hears a  _ knock knock knock  _ on his door five minutes later, treated to the sight of a lopsided smile and a cozy flannel-wearing man. 

"Woah, that was fast."

Youngjo has a bewildered look on his face, almost like he can't believe Hwanwoong has actually agreed to this. 

Which would be reasonable. 

Hwanwoong himself can't believe he actually agreed to this. 

"Are you all ready to go?" 

"I'm gonna grab my bag and then I'll be set. You?" 

"Just gotta lock my door." He says, jostling his key into the lock of apartment 27. 

Hwanwoong’s jaw drops. 

Youngjo is a real-life Disney Prince.

And Youngjo really  _ is _ the cute boy next door. 

**Author's Note:**

> We did it y'all, another fic off the masterlist  
> Only 14 more left to go...?  
> Come poke me if you're one Twitter: @Porteaux_Perah


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